


Kiss The Guy

by PassonovsParagraphs



Category: Disney - All Media Types, Tangled (2010), The Princess and the Frog (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bullying, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2018-10-16 10:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10569867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PassonovsParagraphs/pseuds/PassonovsParagraphs
Summary: Flynn Rider is the coolest guy in school, and he intends to keep his former status as a loser and an outcast at his old school a thing of the past, even if that means staying in the closet until graduation. When Naveen transfers to his school, Flynn falls hard and fast, but he's determined not to get involved with him.His friends have other ideas.





	1. When Push Comes To Shove

* * *

High school was a time to reinvent yourself, as far as Flynn was concerned. He didn’t know what the school motto translated out of Latin into, but he was fairly sure it was Sure, Why Not or Give It A Try.

Flynn was a middle of the term transfer, which most people would accept meant things were about to suck – coming into the school this late in the year meant rushing to catch up with the coursework, trying to memorize the layout of a new building, and not being able to join most extracurricular activities. All of these were a small price to pay for the opportunity not to be Eugene Fitzherbert ever again. His mother was touched he wanted to change his last name to Rider like hers, a sort of show of solidarity in her post-divorce life. She wasn’t aware he’d asked most of his teachers and the office faculty to call him Flynn because he was still working out how to ask her for a legal name change form. That, and, as he thought frequently, he might still change his first name again. Shakespeare’s works had some pretty nifty sounding first names. Romeo was probably too much, but maybe Mecrutio…

As part of the move he had given away or thrown out most of his old clothes, then hit up the thrift store when they were settled in. His was a carefully calculated kind of cool, one that involved trawling through the internet on his smartphone to make Pinterest boards and bookmark all the best streetstyle tumblrs. Everything was a near-copy of something he’d seen and liked online. From the leather jacket that brought the whole look together to the staple dark green denim vest (WikiHow had a great tutorial for dying denim) that he liked to sport, he was a meticulously put together person who looked, on the outside, like he just rolled out of bed, threw on something clean and finger-combed his hair. His iPod was full of music that was in style and his MP3 player that he’d had since he was a kid, the one with the music he actually liked, was tucked away in his backpack. Everything about him eased an easy cool that was actually quite a bit of effort to maintain.

Next came the reputation crafting. He had multiple rumors going about him at all times. Some people thought he was thrown out of his old school for criminal activity. Some people thought his father’s half of the family were mobsters, something that only got heightened when his dad bought him a motorcycle as a ‘sorry I don’t actually care’ present. Some of the girls believed he’d fought a guy over the girl of his dreams and gotten dumped. He was fairly sure Megara from the Drama Club had started that, because that was what had _actually_ happened to her and the details matched up too well, but she often gave him looks that told him she saw right through him. How was anyone’s guess; at least she was content to sip her Turkish coffee and debate the finer points of Emilie Autumn’s latest album and feminism with Esmeralda while covertly watching the rest of the school. Reminded of an internet video he’d seen of a lynx observing its’ prey, Flynn kept as much distance from her as he could, not wanting to be there the moment Megara decided to use her claws.

With a reputation, all the accessories of cool in place, and an awesome new name, it was entirely possible to leave the past behind. No more being shoved into lockers or ducking punches, no jocks writing homophobic slurs on his locker in Sharpie, no worry his grades were about to take a dive when his notebook was snatched by a vindictive bully and thrown away or ruined. He tried not to let his eyes linger on any one guy for too long. He could come out and find someone worth the aggravation of people's ignorance later, in college, when things weren't so pressurized. High school was just not the time or place to be an honest man. He didn’t date any girl seriously or for long, but he tried to be nice about it, alluding to a girl back at his old school he just wasn’t over.

It wasn’t a total lie. He wasn’t over Milo, not completely, even though they were at least back to being able to talk to each other again. The girls just didn’t need to know that the person who’d given him his first kiss after explaining the origin of the word ‘love’ in modern Romance languages was a boy.

Everything was going great up until Naveen transferred in, even later into the year than Flynn, poor guy. His parents were important government types, which meant they went where their jobs dictated. They could’ve shipped him off to a boarding school and had him be in one place year-round, but they valued being there for him too much to do so. As a result, Naveen had a winning smile, a huge supply of stories of schools and people and food in five countries, and obscenely nice clothes, a sort of vintage-chic look that reminded Flynn of Milo in a way that _hurt_. Flynn resolved to give the chatterbox foreigner a wide berth, which wasn’t hard at first given the number of girls that draped themselves over his desk and locker and car with offers to help with everything from his classes to showing him around town. Flynn shared exasperated eye-rolls with Tiana, whose girlfriend Charlotte had a bit of a crush on the new guy. At least Charlotte, though, had the decency to shrug and go, “Ah, well, I’m taken.” Most girls who were taken were apparently capable of forgetting that fact when Naveen turned his gorgeous, vibrant brown eyes on them. Flynn wanted to look into those unfairly perfect eyes forever. More than the remarkable color was the softness to Naveen’s smile, a kind of promise of gentleness, an obvious lack of aggression.

He wanted to know what that was like, to laugh and joke and smooze with people without having his guard up. He wanted Naveen’s life, his loving family, his ability to move away from painful places, even his obnoxious little brother who texted him during class. He wanted to be able to never rise to anyone’s baiting or jokes, wanted that shrug-it-off mentality that he’d been faking for himself since he got here. Mostly, Flynn wanted to date boys and girls alike like Naveen did without caring about the fallout – sure, people were capable of giving _the ambassador of Maldonia’s_ son a free pass because hey, he was from some strange and foreign land and also he was related to important people, it wasn’t worth the flack they’d get from bullying him. On some level Flynn was aware wishing for Naveen’s life meant wishing for the hefty title, the newspaper articles and the creepily high number of Google results. But if he was being completely, totally honest with himself, when he pictured himself living that life it was _alongside_ Naveen, not in place of him. He wanted to just be around him.

 _You’ve got it bad,_ Milo texted him back when Flynn broke down and typed everything out to him in a giant wall of a paragraph of a text, having no patience for proper punctuation. Milo, of course, replied with perfect grammar and punctuation even though it was three in the morning. He’d been up researching a possible link between Quttinirpaaq inscriptions and the break in the Inuit language chain in the Arctic. (Not for the first time, Flynn wondered why someone as smart as Milo had ever dated him.) _Might I suggest turning your loquacious nature on him instead of me?_

Flynn frowned and texted back, _whut_

He could feel Milo’s exasperation across the timezone difference and mountain range that separated them, because Milo rarely used all caps. _TALK TO HIM._

_is there an easier solution_

Milo sent him a link to a youtube analysis of Shakespeare’s Richard III. _Get him as your partner for your English Literature class. Invite him over to watch this and talk. Even if you fail at getting his romantic attention, your grades could stand some bolstering._

_excuse you my grades are fine_

_As is the common parlance on the internet, pics or it didn’t happen_ , Milo shot back.

Flynn sent back a picture of his last test, which Milo thoughtfully sent back after circling areas in which he felt his ex could have improved his essay on _The Canterbury Tales_. Groaning, the teen rubbed at his neck as he looked between his laptop to the test. It was Milo’s fault he was in AP English to begin with; he’d been super supportive of Flynn, then Eugene, maximizing his appeal to colleges on applications. That meant advanced classes and that meant a lot more work than he wanted to actually do. He’d been planning on asking that gorgeous blonde who was always gazing out the window to tutor him. She was sweet and had charming green eyes and got remarkably good grades, but then again, Naveen didn’t do too badly in English Lit. He could probably get away with asking for Naveen’s help and then playing it like he just wanted to shamelessly leech off of him. His reputation could withstand that without anyone suspecting he was gay, primarily because Flynn had leeched off of multiple girls for grades. He regularly got his history notes from Eilonwy in exchange for him telling off girls who teased her for having skipped two years of schooling; she had only hugged him once, but rumor around school was they were trapped in ~forbidden love~ of the dramatic girly girl and bad boy variety. So long as the rumors kept going that his heart was taken and he made a couple of comments here and there about other girls he knew, he could swing this even if Naveen was utterly uninterested in him.

But if it _worked_ then he had no further plan. He didn’t know how to deal with another bout of bullying and there was no exit strategy for this time around. If people wanted his head on a platter again, all he had was a vague mental image of him denying everything. That was a terrible idea. There was no way he could go live with his dad until summer at least, which was too far away to make any part of this viable. He was playing with fire. Annoyed with himself, he chucked his phone at his beanbag chair and turned over, staring resolutely out the window. He could just wait a few years, right? College was a year and a half away, and then he’d be free. There were other guys out there as good or even better than Naveen. He didn’t owe the guy a date or anything. Naveen had never said anything more substantial to him than saying hi in the hallway. He shut his eyes resolutely. Unless fate itself intervened and threw Naveen at him, he was going to ignore Milo’s idea and wait it out. What was that line in that musical Eilonwy liked so much – I am the one thing in life I can control? _Yeah, that, but without the singing,_ he told himself, burying his head under the blankets, _that is the actual plan, screw Milo_. He could look the other way until Naveen moved or college rolled around, whatever came first. _Unless Fate itself intervenes, I’m not doing anything._

The next day at school, Eilonwy appeared beside Flynn, smiled angelically, and abruptly shoved him down the stairs, sending him crashing into Naveen before slipping back into the mob of students. Belatedly, Flynn realized that 1., he had given Eilonwy and Milo each other’s numbers so they could talk nerdy language stuff, 2., Milo was not above enlisting her help and 3., Naveen’s smile up close was as blinding as the sun itself.

 _Did you really not have a better plan?_ Milo asked, amused and vaguely horrified, when she sent him a picture of a flustered Flynn offering a flurry of apologies to a faintly red-faced Naveen.

Eilonwy shrugged to herself as she texted him back. _Hey, it worked for Taran and I. Can’t argue with results!_


	2. Movie Not-A-Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update! Passover and then prepping for Easter with the non-Jewish half of my family kept me busy. Some quick notes for this chapter: there really is a version of Shakespeare's Richard the Third set in Nazi Germany, the song Naveen is listening to at the start of this chapter really does exist and is my go-to song for shipping Naveen with anyone (I highly suggest checking it out), and yes, I am aware Flynn's angst is a little obnoxious here. It's high school, everything seems bigger in the mind of high schoolers than it actually is. Don't worry, it gets better.

When Flynn crashed into Naveen, the African boy heard music.

Specifically, thanks to the fact he had been in the process of taking off his headphones, it was playing _Sweeter Place_ by Svrcina, loud enough to be heard over the clamor of the high school morning chatter and shouting. The effect was disconcerting, having caught Flynn as he fell and ending up looking into his eyes – a dark sepia that sparked from cool to warm depending on the light – while his headphones blared the sweet, melodic slow song into his ears, the lyrics cooing, _‘So I will be yours and you’ll be mine~”_ as he sort of awkwardly supported Flynn by his arms, hands braced on his shoulders. Flynn’s hands were on his chest and when Naveen glanced at them, Flynn all but flung himself out of the other boy’s arms, cheeks flushing beet red. For Flynn the moment was decidedly over before it began out of sheer embarrassment. For Naveen, the music was still going, the phantom touch of the white boy’s strong hands on his chest still felt warm, and he was struck by the endearing, almost soft quality of Flynn’s face when he wasn’t trying to be cool all the time.

Even when he took his headphones off, he let the music play as they dangled around his neck, unwilling to totally break the moment. “No, no, it’s fine,” Naveen chuckled lightly over Flynn’s sputtered apologies. “This school’s one of the most crowded I’ve been to, and that’s saying a lot. It happens.”

Flynn drew himself up and straightened his dark teal-green denim vest, the one that Naveen noticed now brought out the flecks of green in eyes. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well. I think my friend Eilonwy might’ve knocked into me. She’s always in a rush, but don’t take it out on her. She means well.”

“Oh, you know her? I have French III with her – she’s quite good, a bit of an accent, but her grammar is wonderful,” he enthused, glad to have found a topic that wasn’t the pounding in his chest as he took in Flynn’s small, amused smile when Eilonwy was brought up. It was so much more enchanting than ‘the smolder’ ever was.

“Welsh. Her accent is Welsh,” the brunet supplied, leaning against a nearby wall. “She speaks that fluently, too; lived there until she was seven. Kid’s a prodigy in that language stuff, but she doesn’t know when not to mouth off to people, and that’s gotten her in some trouble here and there – I may have decked someone who hassled her, once. Long story.”

Naveen raised his eyebrows slightly. Eilonwy had talked to Naveen in French III, in a vocabulary exercise meant to describe a day in their life in past tense. She’d mentioned twins boys, seniors at the school, who thought she was a snobby hipster and had hassled her whenever they could get away with it. She had repeatedly insulted them back, which hadn’t helped. One day she’d gone outside to sit in the sunshine of the school grounds and read and they had jumped her, one holding her down while another snatched her book out of her hands and started ripping pages out. Then there had been a blur, a lot of swearing, and while Eilonwy’s vocabulary for injuries was lacking, both twins had been thoroughly beaten by a boy in a green denim vest who helped her pick up the book’s pages even when it made him late for class. She hadn’t given his name, but Naveen put the dots together now.

He wasn’t naïve. He had heard Flynn Rider’s reputation around school within a week of getting there. Flynn was mysterious, snarky, cocky, arrogant, probably poor, down one parent, a single child, always hitting on every girl that moved, dropping in and out of relationships, and that was just what was confirmed. Rumors stated some sort of past love he was very certainly not over. Other rumors said he was dating Eilonwy, who fell over laughing once at the idea. And certainly, Naveen didn’t see chemistry between them or romantic affection in how he talked about her. But it was curious why someone as full of himself as everyone said Flynn was wasn’t jumping to tell the story of how he’d helped Eilonwy. He’d even downplayed it as it being one guy and one punch, as if he didn’t want too many questions. Maybe he wasn’t as much of a braggart as everyone thought. Naveen had been to enough schools to see that rumors had a way of taking on a life of their own and people’s personalities got exaggerated. Then Flynn took a breath, visibly steeling himself, and the light behind his eyes dimmed a little. Naveen knew that look, that brace-for-anything expression. His father did it when he had to prepare himself for ambassadorial duties. Seeing it on someone so much younger was disquieting.

“So,” Flynn said to fill the pause, “Eilonwy says you’re pretty good at English Lit. I somehow stumbled into that class, but I’m not doing great, there. Any chance I could convince you to partner up for me for that Shakespeare project that Mr. Cogsworth assigned yesterday?”

When Naveen was younger, his father had told him to never trust a man who couldn’t look you in the eyes while requesting something – especially if that person was poor.

When he said, “Sure!” his music was telling him, _‘It’s not what we have, it’s how well we love.’_

 

* * *

 

 

Mr. Cogsworth had assigned his AP English Literature class a project comparing a Shakespeare play to an adaptation.

Most people went with movies, though Tadashi and Fred had gone with the 52-episode anime adaptation of Romeo and Juliet as an excuse to watch cartoons. Tiana and Charlotte snagged West Side Story as their adaptation of the same story. Most of the class was picking an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, it seemed, to the point Cogsworth was visibly relieved when Naveen and Flynn picked the movie adaptation of Richard the Third set in 1930’s Germany. Yes, it was obviously going to be a Nazi metaphor from start to finish, but it was a play about a dictator manipulating and murdering his way to the top, so Cogsworth was fine with it. Naveen was intrigued by the idea, while Flynn was counting on Milo to have recommended him a non-boring Shakespeare adaptation. Milo had introduced him to a lot of weird movies over their time dating, not one of which had been boring, so Flynn’s hopes were high.

This didn’t stop him from texting Eilonwy repeatedly to let her know he’d get her back, to which she replied, _Ha! My crush is in another school altogether, good luck and Godspeed._ He fumed silently but resolved to mull it over later, when he had more time to do so. Right now, he had a crisis to attend to, namely the fact that Naveen was going to be coming over to his house, which was not the ritziest of places. Worse, they were going to get a head start on their assignment by going there right after school, because while Flynn wanted to play it off, he couldn’t think of a properly aloof and chill way to invite himself over to Naveen’s place, something that he was already regretting. He didn’t want to seem like another person trying to get in on Naveen’s family’s money and fame, so the brunet had to buckle down and accept that the hottest guy in school was about to see his place without there being any time to make it seem cool.

Naveen had a driver – because he was _Naveen_ – but he wanted to ride on Flynn’s motorcycle. The logical thing to do, when faced with a hot guy clinging to his back for the duration of the ride home, was to say no, since he had no idea if he could manage to maintain any composure if he let that happen. As he saw Naveen’s face light up and watched him run his hands over the machine, though, Flynn’s resolve crumbled like a stone. He’d just have to be extra careful driving since the other guy didn’t have a helmet. He may have focused on this far too intensely in order to try to push away how pleasantly warm Naveen felt, how his arms timidly hesitated before wrapping around Flynn’s waist, the way Naveen laughed when they made sharp turns or hit bumps, sounding like he didn’t have a care in the world.

Flynn had never been so enthralled with someone in his life. He couldn’t help smiling like an idiot – right up until they reached his house. His mother’s place wasn’t anything like the luxurious places that Naveen had grown up in, a simple one-story red brick place with old, somewhat creaky dark wood floors, walls with old and somewhat discolored wallpaper and an overabundance of things. His mother filled the space left by her husband’s departure from her life with stuff. Flynn filled it with things, too, just in a different way, the things he loved the most sequestered away in his room where no one could comment on them. For this reason, he steered Naveen into the living room to watch the movie to keep away from the more personal side of him. Even Milo hadn’t been in Flynn’s room when they were dating. He needed something his own, something not Flynn Rider, professional cool guy or Eugene Fitzherbert, full time loser. He needed a place to just be a person and letting other people in seemed like it would destroy that somehow.

For his part, Naveen took in the assorted knickknacks Flynn’s mother had obtained and arranged with interest, smiling at the wall full of artwork picked out from thrift stores until there was barely room left on the wall; she loved art and found it charming. Flynn personally wasn’t fond of the many pairs of eyes it felt like were watching him. It took a minute for Naveen to process the assorted bunny figurines on top of the TV until it clicked that rabbit ears was old slang for antenna. Neither of them commented on the absurd amount of plants she had everywhere, although his mother had left him a note saying she’d already watered them so they were taken care of. Flynn felt like he was waiting for the bomb to drop, for Naveen to turn to him and laugh at how silly these things were.

“I apologize if my place doesn’t live up to my mythical high school reputation,” Flynn snarked dryly, loading up the DVD. “If it helps, pretend the bunnies are in a gang and deal drugs when we’re not looking.”

Naveen snickered, leaning back into the well-worn, dark blue couch. He shrugged, easing into the cushions and putting his feet up on the coffee table, which, when Flynn didn’t object to, he assumed was okay. “There seems to be a lot of rumors going around about you at school, you know.” Flynn shrugged in response, grabbing the remote and sitting next to Naveen, eyes slightly guarded, shoulders subtly tensed. If Naveen hadn’t been the son of an ambassador, he probably wouldn’t have caught it. “It doesn’t bother you?”

Flynn’s mouth quirked into a brief, sad smile that was gone in an instant, a flicker of a memory Naveen wished he could see or understand. “I’ve had worse. Now focus, we’re supposed to be learning.”

The movie was, as Milo had put it, Richard the Third Reich – a joke Flynn had been appalled by and laughed at simultaneously. As a film adaptation, it stuck closely to the structure of the play, omitting only a few lines that just couldn’t work with the change in setting. For the most part, Richard the Third’s backstabbing, cruelty, arrogance and total lack of anything resembling a soul made the Nazi parallels seem appropriate, even obvious in retrospect. The long monologues that were so unbearable when read in class seemed a lot more ominous coming from a soldier on a lot of levels. This was definitely not something Flynn would have chosen as a date movie, but as far as making Shakespeare not boring to him, it did its job. There was a genuine sense of dread the longer it went on, dread that kept getting paid off as Richard found someone new to add to his growing body count.

As the movie went on, Flynn became aware of two things. The first was that Naveen had slumped against him slightly on the couch, still awake, just clearly not enjoying this particular rendition. Secondly, Flynn saw for the first time in years of dealing with over-wrought Shakespeare plays that Richard the Third in fact did possess some humanity. He fought it every step of the way, hated that everything he’d accomplished made him unlovable even to himself, hated that he felt bad at all, tried to shove down whatever good person he used to be in order to make himself anew. And wasn’t that what Flynn himself was doing, in a way, at this school? Taking AP classes, acing his schoolwork, getting into less fights, remaking himself into something other people admired at the cost of a lot of his happiness. Granted, he hadn’t ever actually been all that happy a person, even as a child. He’d always been sort of lonely, sort of a loser, and he’d just turned that into a persona now, the cool loner… which still left him alone. He couldn’t even really explain it to other people at this point. Flynn Rider had made a mess of Eugene Fitzherbert’s life. As Richard lamented on screen, why should anyone pity him when he himself couldn’t?

Naveen rested his head against Flynn’s shoulder. The warmth was welcome, a softness to take the edge of his harsh thoughts, and he wanted to hold him, suddenly, some weird need to be comforted about how hellish high school was and the realization he was incredibly lonely no matter who he texted or chatted with at school washing over him in an abrasive wave. He wished suddenly he hadn’t put in all the time and effort to make Naveen think he was cool. He wished he hadn’t decided to break things off with Milo, who had found Eugene just as cool as Flynn. Could Naveen do that? Would he just see it all as a series of ridiculous lies – which they kind of were, honestly – and walk away? Flynn had issues. Even if the most handsome guy in school was, in fact, into him, he wasn’t aware of the disaster he was courting. The smart thing to do was lean away from Naveen, do this assignment and avoid him from here on out.

What he actually ended up doing was slipping his hand over Naveen’s, leaning his head atop the other boy’s and finishing the movie, fully aware that nothing in his life ever went well, so it was worth it to enjoy the moment while he could, however short-lived it might be.

Milo was right. He had it _bad_.


	3. Complex Yet Non-Agglutinative

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like the theme of this chapter is 'being a teenager sucks'. Because frankly, a lot of it kind of does. Everything is An Ordeal, the world is constantly ending, and nobody in this fic has had the chance to just exist in a stress-free environment the way media likes to present teenagerhood as being. Fortunately, it will be getting better for these two shortly. It's just that before things get better in life, in my experience they don't get worse, they just get awkward and hard to explain.
> 
> Also, next chapter: Esmeralda and Megara. I am hyped.

Naveen rested his head against Flynn’s shoulder and shut his eyes, fingers interlacing with the other boy’s.

In a moment, he was going to have to pull away. He always did. It wasn’t that people didn’t like him, it was that he wasn’t worth fighting for. When his family moved or when their wealthy status made someone uncomfortable, he ended up being not worth the hassle. He wasn’t worth long distance relationships or being awkward for. Boys, girls, friends, partners, they all ended up giving up early on. He had tried to learn to savor the moment, the few weeks or months he had with people, even though it was ultimately always like trying to hold water in his hands, slipping away no matter what he tried.

He was tired of fleeting moments. So much of the time, he felt like he was chasing after something intangible, struggling to keep pace with life. That was why he had decided to kick back and relax so much of the time. In the end, he’d get swept up in life’s current again as before. There was no point in fighting it. And he was happy, with his friends, in his classes, with his brother running around underfoot. Only at night, laying awake, did he find himself wishing that for once he could just be _normal_. Normal people didn’t arrive in a town wondering when they would leave it. Normal people didn’t have to pick everything up and start over on repeat.

Flynn had only done that once, only moved once, but he’d built up an act that was partially genuine, a grey space inbetween the other niches of high school to fill. He lived in a house that had the opportunity to gain years’ worth of clutter, somewhere quiet without anyone else to interrupt. Naveen couldn’t fathom what it was like to live like this. He wanted it, and he wanted Flynn, with his funny remarks and wry smile and secret heart that cared for his friends fiercely. He didn’t want any more shallow people after the new popular guy for a fling. This not-a-date, this _thing_ , that they were doing, was already more genuine than the last dozen fun and insubstantial dates he’d been on.

 Naveen opened his eyes, looking to Flynn, whose cheeks were a touch red but who made no move to turn away. He looked much better when he wasn’t trying to project an air of toughness like he did at school. His eyes were a mix of emotions that Naveen couldn’t place, conflicted and somber. Flynn glanced down at their hands, took a deep breath as if to speak, then seemed to lose his nerve.

_Bzzt! Bzzt!_

The vibration of Naveen’s phone interrupted the moment. He fired off a quick text to let his driver know where to come to pick him up as Flynn shoved his hands in his pockets, leaning away slightly. He swallowed, glancing at Naveen with failed attempts at subtlety.

“Girlfriend?” Flynn inquired, voice a forced casual that could never fool the son of a diplomat.

“Not hardly,” he replied, checking his latest text from his brother and replying to that rather than look awkwardly at Flynn.

There was a pause. “Boyfriend?”

“I’m single right now,” he said softly, glancing over at Flynn in time to see him breathe a visible sigh of relief. “Of course, that could change.”

Flynn stared at him for a moment, having some internal war of a debate that Naveen couldn’t begin to guess at. He was having one of his own, knowing it would be stupid to end up with feelings for someone who he would have to leave behind. It was a bad idea. There were a hundred things he could say to put the idea of them being together out of the question, make it sound illogical or impossible, stop this before they ended up another two month long relationship. Didn’t he tell himself last time that true loves were the stuff of fairytales? This was not a fairytale, Flynn was not his Prince Charming, and they were both too old to believe in true love. _Leave_ , he told himself. _You’re too old to be falling in love at first sight anymore._

Instead, he leaned over and kissed him, briefly, before he could talk himself out of it. Naveen was a creature of impulse. He made impulsive decisions, said whatever came into his head and drew his own conclusions at random. He was not the kind of carefully calculated cool that Flynn was, he was just himself, and right now, that meant he was a guy head over heels for another guy without knowing or caring why. There didn’t need to be a why. They felt comfortable together, they were friends, what more did there need to be, so long as it was mutual? And the way Flynn kissed back, one hand coming up to cup Naveen’s face, it was assuredly mutual. For a moment everything was soft and warm and whole, perfect, in a way that threw gasoline on the fire of Naveen’s belief that love at first sight could be true.

His driver honked the horn and broke the moment a second time.

“I’m gonna slash his tires,” Flynn groused, though there wasn’t much venom to it. His real smile was infinitely more charming than the ones he wore at school. “Then I’ll ride in on my motorcycle and offer you a ride. Save the day, get the guy.”

Naveen laughed, shaking his head. “Don’t, everyone will think I did it just to get you to let me ride with you again. Give me your number, and we’ll text later, alright?”

Flynn hesitated, visibly shy for a brief moment until Naveen smiled at him. He had his phone out and their numbers were exchanged by the time the second honk from the car horn sounded.

 

* * *

 

 

Milo’s friendship with his ex-boyfriend was about as implausible as his relationship with his current one. Most people had expected him to end up hating his ex, since that was more typical of teenagers, but just as his grandfather and Professor Whitmore at the local university had mended their friendship after they broke up, so had he made sure he was still friends with Flynn.

“Life’s too short to spend it hating anyone, especially people you once loved,” his grandfather had told him the night he came home ranting about how much he hated high school, sociological behavioral patterns and Flynn, in that order. “Nothing is promised. You parents went on a drive and I never saw them again. If he died right this second, would you be able to live with yourself?”

After that, Milo had immediately swallowed back his disdain for texting and started talking things out with Flynn, who was still going by Eugene back then. It had taken weeks for them to be able to actually talk without it feeling weird, and sometimes there were still awkward pauses in their speech, but now that they were miles away from each other, they’d ended up back at a comfortable friendship. They played video games online together, they talked, they tried very hard not to think about college and the challenges that were about to come with that, and when things were rough, they could always text each other. Milo had once spent three hours sending Flynn texts that were essay length on how he hated that he was in love with Clayton and wanted it to stop and it would never work. Flynn had interjected snide one liners and ended it with, _ASK HIM OUT ALREADY FFS THIS IS NOT YOUR CRAZY LANGUAGE SCIENCE!_

He hadn’t expected Flynn to send him essay length texts one day in return, and to be fair, he didn’t, but Flynn still sent him a flurry of them, incoherent and rapid-fire.

 _I – Naveen – he’s got great eyes I hate it – he kissed me – this whole day is like ‘thanks! I hate it’ but I mean both – but I don’t – he’s too good for me – how did we get from Shakespeare to smoothing – he likes holding hands I’m in love – I didn’t even smolder at him_ , Flynn texted, each one arriving within a second of the other.

Wincing, Milo decided to call him, if only to get a full sentence out of the guy. “You want to run that by me in a language I speak?”

“ _Il c _oup de cœur__ _!”_

“…terrible, broken French aside, that doesn’t make it any clearer if I should be cheering you on or comforting you,” he pointed out, grateful that his current boyfriend was, if nothing else, almost brutally straightforward. Clayton’s French was worse than Flynn’s, but it was significantly easier to get an answer out of him that was actually useful.

There was a dull thud as Flynn’s head made contact with his desk. “He’s perfect. Wholesome. And I’m just me.”

 _Oh, this again_ , the bespectacled boy thought. Somehow, the one common denominator among everyone Milo had either dated or befriended was confidence issues. It was one aspect of dating Flynn he didn’t miss in the slightest. “Clearly, ‘just you’ is what he’s interested in. Dating is not an agglutinative polysynthetic language, Flynn, especially when guys are involved. It’s more… tonal.”

“How did you _ever_ get kissed when that’s your idea of romantic advice?” Flynn asked. That sort of talk was the part of dating _Milo_ he didn’t miss in the slightest. “I don’t know what ‘tonal’ means, here.”

“It means be honest. I’m not spending months watching you circle around somebody who kissed you like Aladdin and Herc again, okay? I’m the least qualified person in our group of friends to be supplying romantic advice, but I’ve learned lots about what not to do thanks to high school. Send Naveen one of those texts you used to send me with way too many complicated emojis. Make him a playlist and link him to it. And tell him about your complex about being in the closet.”

“If I do that, he’ll want to know why I can’t just burst out of it like he did,” his ex-boyfriend replied, sounding small and alone and hopeless in ways that made Milo’s heart melt even post-break up. “He’ll think I’m a coward.”

“No, he won’t. If he does, then you deserve better anyway. But either way, it’s either be honest or sit in your room trying to drown out your thoughts with your secret stash of hipster music while also being incredibly unfair to him about everything.” 

It must have been worse than Milo thought, because Flynn didn’t even pretend he didn’t have a secret stash of awful experimental music he blared to fill the silence. “…I’ll think about it.”

He did, for several hours, laying on the couch rewatching Richard the III with uncomprehending eyes, plotting out the assignment in his head and trying, failingly, not to picture himself sitting next to Naveen as they worked on it, and how many chances he would have to take the other boy’s hands in his. At some point his phone buzzed, a text from his mother informing him that she was working late again, so he rewatched the movie again, taking notes this time, throwing some ramen in the microwave when he got hungry, debating the merits of texting Naveen or asking Milo for a second opinion or ignoring everything altogether. 

Eventually, he fell asleep on the couch, face buried in the pillow Naveen had leaned on, imagining he could still feel the warmth from his sunny smile there, no closer to a solution than he had been right after Naveen left his house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The French phrase Flynn used (incorrectly) translates out to 'he hit me in the heart'. A hit to the heart is used by the French to describe suddenly falling in love with someone out of the blue. An agglutinative language or polysynthetic language, both concepts Milo refers to, are when whole sentences are a single word formed by adding suffixes, morphemes and qualifies to a base - and he's right, your relationship should not remind you of a list of concepts stacked on top of each other rapidly at great length. But God forbid Milo just say that.


	4. Make Your Own Fortune

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be told entirely from Naveen's point of view. For now, have a chapter that's all Flynn. Sadly I didn't get as much Meg in here as I wanted, but as I was writing I realized she'd nope right out of giving anyone romantic advice so that task fell to Esmeralda - aka The Most Reasonable Person Present, Always.

A while back, Esmeralda had started doing palm readings, Tarot card spreads and other fortune telling nonsense in order to raise money for her band. She had been exceptionally clear on the fakeness of it to her Drama Club friends, including Eilonwy, who had in turn relayed that it was all garbage to Flynn when describing it. 

Still, Flynn showed up outside Megara’s house bright and early Saturday morning, where band practice was loud enough to be heard as he walked up the driveway. He needed clarity and if it came in the form of Megara slamming the door in his face, a bunch of lines on his hand or cardboard with nice art on it, all of it would be better than the way he’d spent the last two hours, curled up on his bed with the playlist he made Milo back when they were a couple and thinking about all the ways he could ruin things with Naveen. He adjusted the hem of his _Xiu Xiu_ T-shirt, a limited edition black number with the band’s name in indigo over a white paint splatter pattern. It was one of those things he’d gotten off of eBay that made him look like he had more money than he did while also establishing his status as Someone Who Knows About Music. _The things I do to be cool,_ he thought, knocking again and checking his reflection in the mirrored glass of the wind chimes Megara kept by the door. _By the time I graduate I’ll have nightmares about all this hipster stuff._

Meg opened the door a few moments after the music receded – or more accurately, some of it did. Somewhere within the depths of her house blared the howling of _ABBA_ , which didn’t go with the smoky-eyed girl’s look at all. On any other day, he might remark on the persistent rumors around school that her dad was the hippiest hippie to ever hippie, but he was too tired to go there, so instead he just ignored it. Megara seemed to be ignoring it, too, going off of her casual yawn as if her house wasn’t regularly the loudest on the block.

“Hey, um, is Esmeralda here?” he asked, trying to look behind her and into the house.

She flipped her hair over her shoulder and sighed. “Esme, are you here?”

“No!” came Esmeralda’s cheerful voice from somewhere, accompanied by the sound of something sizzling on the skillet. “None of us are here until nine or until we've had coffee.”

To her credit, Megara didn’t even blink. “Sorry, none of us are here until nine. Including me, so if you could just wait until visiting hours…”

“I know she’s – wait, nine? In the morning? How early did you all get here to start practicing?”

Emerging in a sea of plaid and holding an egg sandwich, Merida appeared, leaning against Meg for support. “Is it day out?” she asked blearily, blinking at the sun. “Well, will ya look at that – no wonder me Ma was so mad at me for not textin’ her back. Must’ve pulled another all-nighter. Oh, hey there, Flynn. Who’re you here to see?”

“Esmeralda, please,” he said quickly, sensing an opening, and sure enough, Merida yanked him into the house with her free hand, calling out for their lead vocalist as Megara groaned in the background.

“Ralda! You’ve got a customer, I think. Ooh, is that bacon?”

The redheaded drummer let go of Flynn’s shirt in favor of sitting on the dining room table and staring, intently, at the frying pan. Esmeralda rolled her eyes, as if this was a standard scene for her, still tending to her band-mates’ breakfasts. Fast asleep at the table, there was the sleeping form of Jane Porter, the band’s manager and the only way a high school political punk indie band like theirs got any gigs. Amidst the other girls with their various distinct anti-establishment styles, she looked out of place until Merida untied a plaid shirt from around her waist and draped it the British girl’s sleeping form.

Having heard that Esmeralda was the ‘team mom’ of the band, whatever their name was this weekend (inevitably, it would be changed back to Break The Cutie come Monday after the band argued a bit), Flynn made the immediate choice to better his chances at not getting a pre-rehearsed ‘fortune’ by volunteering to cook. He regretted this within twenty minutes, as all the girls ate like ravenous wolves save for Jane, who, when she woke up, had two pieces of French toast and complimented Flynn on his shirt before engaging the bulk of the band in a discussion on whether or not they could reclaim the word ‘bitch’ in a feminist way in their song lyrics; smart phones were pulled out, dictionaries consulted and Megara was against it, citing the ways in which the media had used it while Merida was for it, her agreement consisting entirely of naming other musicians who had reclaimed it. Flynn observed everything with the sense he was intruding upon other people’s lives and was deeply relieved when Esmeralda gestured for him to follow her into the living room for a more private place to talk.

There were tapestries with phases of the moon on them on the walls, a tie-dyed throw blanket and beaded curtains everywhere, but Flynn could tell by the why-are-you-here look on Esmeralda’s face that if he asked a single question about Meg’s hippie dad, he’d be out. That left him with honesty, which was regrettable since that was something he wasn’t terribly comfortable or familiar with these days.

“I need a fortune telling thing,” he told her, cringing at how that sounded. “And a nondisclosure agreement.”

“Rider, do you think anybody would _believe_ me if I told them you came over here at eight thirty in the morning to get your palm read?” she raised an eyebrow at him, looking almost as dryly snarky as Meg did when she did that to him. “Now seriously, what are you here for?”

The awkward silence that followed lasted, according to the ticking of the owl-shaped clock on the wall, twelve seconds, which coincidentally was exactly as long as it took to destroy a teenage boy’s self-confidence. Then he took a deep breath and stuck his hand out at her as if he thought a palm reading might be physically painful and he needed to brace for it.

“…you’re serious.” The dark-skinned girl put a hand on his forehead. “Are you running a fever?”

“No.”

“High?”

“Not since Gaston’s birthday bash, thanks.”

“Drunk?”

“I don’t do that. Reminds me of a water park I’d rather forget.” When she raised both eyebrows at him, he winced. “I mean. There was an incident in seventh grade involving hard lemonade, which I didn’t realize contained alcohol, and my old school’s annual end of semester trip to a local water park. It’s a long story. Look, the point is, I’m serious and sober, as much as I don’t want to be either right now.”

She pursed her lips, looking at his hand. “You know this is a shtick I do to get money. I know you know, because Eilonwy is our group’s biggest asexual groupie. So why are you asking?”

_Don’t tell her you’re desperate. Don’t tell her you’re desperate. Don’t tell her-_

“I’m really desperate.”

With a sigh, she gestured to the couch, which was dark green and smelled faintly of patchouli. He sat down and, to avoid having to look at her, picked at a loose thread on his jeans, feeling her watch his every action. After a moment, she exited and returned with a plate of the leftover scrambled eggs, which she handed to him along with a spoon before sitting on the couch herself, legs folded underneath her. He’d seen her grab breakfast for Phoebus once in the cafeteria the week his guinea pig died and wondered if he looked that bad. If he did, it was close to how he felt. Side-eyeing a table made out of driftwood and glass, he tried to come up with a way to explain things that would preserve his reputation as a mysterious, cool badass. There was none. He had to start picking between Flynn, the guy too cool for the mainstream, for close friends and for ‘feels’, and Eugene.

The problem was, he wasn’t sure he knew who Eugene was anymore.

“Eilonwy’s been translating our songs into Welsh,” Esmeralda offered up as a conversation starter. “She’s been thinking about trying it in French, too. Jane says there’s a big market for foreign-language hipsters out there.” When he hummed in agreement, she added gently, “Eilonwy says you introduced her to a guy from your old school that’s into languages. That was nice of you.”

He shrugged lightly. “She’s really smart. She’ll get more out of listening to him than everybody else in this house put together.”

“It was nice of you,” she repeatedly thoughtfully, “but it wasn’t very badboy-cool-guy Flynn Rider of you, even if you bonded over that awful singer you like on the first day you were here.”

_Nicole Dollanganger. Eilonwy’s favorite singer… and the crush that made her realize she likes girls. God, if you’re out there, please just let Esmeralda think I’m only into her work because I’m a hipster. Heck, let her think I’m one of those gross straight guys who thinks girl-on-girl is ‘hot’. Just please don’t let her know I’m-_

Flynn’s mouth went dry. His mind refused to finish the thought. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he shoveled food down to keep himself from saying anything until his plate was empty. Some part of him was horrified that Esmeralda had him all figured out and another was grateful she knew without him having to say it. He couldn’t say most of what he felt. He couldn’t think most of it, either. When Eilonwy had bumped into him the first day of school and seen his iPod, she’d asked him what his favorite album and song were, smiling brightly and talking about the bravery in titling an album _Embarrassing Love Songs_. She’d mentioned a former-girlfriend-current-boyfriend whose ringtone she’d set to be the song Hair Lockets. And in that moment, Flynn had realized that this was, at its’ core, a college town, and it was more open, open enough Eilonwy could talk about her trans-guy boyfriend without fear, and there was tolerance and freedom here that he had, by the start of day one of school, already locked himself out of by constructing his elaborate hipster indie badboy all-the-labels-and-none act. It was one of the worst moments of his life.

She watched him with a sad smile. “When my family first moved here, it was the middle of seventh grade. I thought I could reinvent myself. I straightened my hair, tried to lighten my skin, wore jeans and pretended to like boybands. It was stupid. Stressful, too. Eventually I got tired of trying. If people were going to make fun of me anyway, I wanted to at least live my truth while they did it.”

“I don’t know what my truth is,” he said, so quietly it might have been a whisper, unnerved and left shaken by her ability to see through him. “And I had enough of being made fun of at my old school to last me a lifetime.” Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to push the words out, like moving boulders: “I got bullied so badly I started skipping school. I quit the clubs I was in. I gave up on everything. Because as much as they hated me, I hated me more.”

Esmeralda placed a hand on his shoulder. “You want a palm reading? Your head line has a break in it, which means you’re going to have a moment of major crisis. It’ll get better, but you’ve got to deal with it first. You have a Mount of Mars, which is supposed to indicate courage. It’s weak, but it’s there. There’s something good in you, even if other people don’t see it, even if you don’t see it – and you don’t have any of the usual arrogant or boastful lines I have to pretend to ignore when I’m telling clients what they want to hear.” She pulled him in for a one-armed hug. “Like I told Eilonwy when you had to fight off bullies for her over her dating Taran: high school isn’t the end of the world, or life, or anything more than you let it be, okay?”

He nodded, understanding instantly why Esmeralda was, while not popular in the strictest sense, one of the most respected people in the school. _She does this for everyone_ , he realized, something like determination making him sit up straighter. _She helps everybody and I never let her help me before because I didn’t want to be uncool. That’s stupid. I’m being stupid. I – I’m doing the same kind of thing guys did to me back at my old school._

“Thanks, um, Esme, if I can call you that. You’re exactly as awesome as all the alleged losers of the school say you are. I just wish I was as cool as I pretended to be.”

“Maybe you are.” Her robin’s egg blue eyes sparkled, as if challenging him. “Only one way to find out.”

_Be honest, a hundred percent honest? That’s way over the line. I couldn’t do that at school, people would eat me alive. Not everybody’s a badass like you, Esme. But… being honest to Naveen, after he saw me at my dorkiest and was into it?_

_That, I can try._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All palm-reading info comes from one of the many books on Neo Paganism I got during the stint I was a Religious Studies major. I am fully aware that it's not a common Romani practice - and so is Esmeralda, who does it because it brings cash in and white people stupidly still buy into fortune reading g*psy stereotypes.
> 
> Nicole Dollanganger and Xiu Xiu are real bands beloved by hipsters, Flynn's Xiu Xiu T-shirt really exists, and Dollanganger is both openly bi and has songs about past loves, ladies and men alike. Hair Lockets, the song Eilonwy and Taran have set as their ringtone, is very sweet if a bit morbid. But the rest of Dollanganger's work addresses some very triggering topics, so please read up on her before looking up her music. I don't want to trigger anybody who looks up music mentioned in fic the way I do.
> 
> Taran's a transguy in this fanfic. Eilonwy is asexual and biromantic.


End file.
